


Reasons Why (I Lie)

by AlwaysLera



Category: The Avengers (2012)
Genre: F/M, Friendship, Gen, Natasha starts at SHIELD, Partnership, playing loose with canon, two truths one lie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-25
Updated: 2013-01-25
Packaged: 2017-11-26 19:47:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,603
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/653788
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AlwaysLera/pseuds/AlwaysLera
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Don't play two truths and a lie with the Black Widow.</p><p>Or, Clint takes Natasha out with a few friends when she's passed her tests to go into the field for SHIELD. They still don't know each other very well. Natasha is awkward. Clint is more awkward. </p><p>It got weird at the end but I have no regrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Reasons Why (I Lie)

Rumor had it that Hawkeye and the Black Widow were fucking each other long before they actually were. Rumor had it that they were doing it before he brought her in. When he walked through the halls after he brought her in, people asked him how long he had known her exact location, how he had hidden his knowledge of Russian from SHIELD, how he had exactly, precisely, convinced her to turn. Hawkeye ignored all of these insinuations. He didn’t like them, but he ignored them. The answers he could give which were the truth would be perceived as lies and it would be exhausting to explain everything only to have it discounted.

(Answers: he tracked her for the better part of a year between assignments, and for the last four months consistently, but she was the best of the best for a reason; he learned Russian when he was first given the directive that if he ran into her, he should take her out. Coulson knew. They didn’t see the need to inform SHIELD that he had learned a new skill to achieve a objective; he put an arrow through her right shoulder and pinned her to a wall. While he removed the bullet she put in her shoulder, they compared stories about places they ran into each other and he asked her why she came here instead of running. She said she wanted to die and he said it didn’t seem right that someone as young and talented and pretty as she wanted to die. She told him the world wasn’t fair and he agreed. A few hours later he asked her if she wanted to ride in his jet plane and she asked him if he asked all the pretty girls he met.  He smiled at her and said no, just her, so she said yes.)

But Coulson had made her his problem (if you asked Barton, he’d grudgingly agreed that it made sense he brought home the poisonous spider like a pet and begged to keep her) and so Barton made it abundantly clear that he and Natasha were not sleeping together. Barton wasn’t known for prudish behavior and he didn’t change after bringing in the Black Widow.

Three months after Natasha comes in, she passes her final evaluations with flying colors and bursts onto the shooting range, her heart pounding in her throat, looking for Hawkeye. Only her very sharp skills and enhanced reactions kept her from being shot. She bent backwards and the arrow, already midflight, flew past her throat and into the target.

“Holy shit,” Barton croaked.

Natasha looked at him. “That was close.”

She had never seen him that pale. He swallowed hard and said, “Christ, woman, can’t you come in the normal entrance like everyone else?”

She doesn’t answer him. Just inspects the arrow in the shooting range. The programming in her head is gone but she still sees things in a calculating light. She knows that Barton can shoot with either hand with almost any weapon though he prefers the bow, and he doesn’t say why. She’s read his file. He’s as well trained as she in hand to hand combat, though he dislikes it, and if he had the medical experiments performed on him that she had, they’d be an even match. But she is not a sniper. She could not shoot hundreds of meters out with any weapon put into her hand. She is a little jealous. Sometimes she wishes she did not have to be that close to do what she does.

“I passed,” she tells him, pulling the arrow out of the target.

“Don’t,” he starts to tell her, but it’s too late. The shaft of the arrow rotates and hundreds of tiny spikes shoot out, stabbing into her hand.  She grunts against the scream in her throat and tries to open her hand but it won’t remove from the shaft of the arrow. Barton’s hand closes around her wrist and she starts to react but he snaps, “Dammit, Natasha.”

She freezes and looks at him. He glares at her. “Don’t. Touch. My. Shit. Without. Asking.”

He presses his thumb against a tiny indent at the head of the arrow and the blades all retract. He turns her wrist over and inspects the tiny wounds. He says casually, “There’s a mild sedative, but I doubt it’ll affect you.”

She says, “What kind of arrows are you shooting here?”

“They’re new. I had to get used to calculating the weight and distance on them,” he murmurs, distracted by inspecting her hand. “They work, though. That’s good to know. Thanks for testing that.”

She snorts. Her head hurts a bit but she suspects that’s the sedative. She says, “Good thing it takes much more than that to knock me out.”

“And then the antidote or you’ll die,” Barton says cheerfully. “You forget, we know more about you than you know about you.”

Her mouth tightens. “I know.”

He releases her hand and says, “Rinse that out and then meet me on Deck Five in fifteen?”

She frowns. “Why?”

“We’re going out to celebrate. Welcome to SHIELD.”

He is surprised when she actually meets him on Deck Five. (He says to her, “I didn’t think you did group activities” and she says, “I don’t. I didn’t know this was a group activity.”) He takes her out with a couple of other people (Phil Coulson, whom Clint basically has to drag there by his tie, Maria Hill, Kingston Lewis, Niall Persons) to a bar not far off base. The bar is blue collar, a little rough around the edges, but it has great beer, dark corners, and is a favorite amongst SHIELD staff so the locals are used to “them government folk” coming in, a little cleaner around the edges than the other clientele, and sitting in dark corners. The bartenders like them because SHIELD pays in cash and tips well. Barton tips exceptionally well for someone who doesn’t drink.

He senses the effect that Natasha’s presence has on the bar. She dressed casually but she is wary and her looks and aloofness make her an easy target. They slide up to the bar to order drinks first and a few men leer at Natasha. Natasha does not react other than her jaw stiffens slightly. They buy her drinks that she leaves on the counter. That only makes her a game, a prize to be won.

While they’re at the bar, Clint slides up next to her, turns his face slightly so his mouth is by her ear, and murmurs, “The more ice queen you play, the more they want you.”

She looks at him in surprise. He shrugs. “That goes for most places with a high level of testosterone actually.”

She doesn’t say anything. But she warms up slightly, smiles a little bit at him, and the corners of her eyes slant down, her brow unfurrowing. She laughs, false, but a laugh nonetheless, at a joke the bartender tells and he gives her a comforting smile because even he can tell she’s out of sorts. Then she figures out her cover for being public.

She says, her Russian accent thick, “I have never been to an American bar before.”

The locals, who tend not to like foreigners, especially Russians, back off a bit, just watching her with a close eye. The bartender relaxes because it explains why she’s staring intently at the vodka. He makes her a drink, slides it across the bar, and Clint pays and ushers her without touching her to their table in the back. He sits between Maria and Natasha and listens as Maria reaches over and shakes hands with Natasha, introducing herself.

Natasha says, “This is your girlfriend, right, Barton?”

Clint can feel himself blush. He swallows a gulp of water. “Uh. No. Where did you hear that?”

Natasha does not even look alarmed. “Scuttlebutt.”

He glances at Maria who looks like she was hit by a train. He says, “Scuttlebutt is a lousy gossip. Ex. Ex girlfriend.”

Natasha says, “Nice that you two can be friends.”

Friends was a loose term. Maria and him could be in the same room again. The breakup had been ugly and Coulson and Fury had gotten involved. It was hard to tell who dumped who after the days long fighting and screaming matches that had occurred. He had cheated on her. She had cheated on him. He took it personal that she had cheated with a woman. She threw a lamp at his head and made contact. Then she kept screaming at him in the medical wing. Then Clint had the brilliant idea to confront the girl Maria slept with. That brilliant idea ended with him with a broken nose and the girl with a broken hand which is where Coulson and Fury stepped in. Somehow, the girl that he slept with avoided all of the conflict and Clint stopped seeing her out of pure resentment for that fact.

But still, it seemed like Natasha enjoys herself and she and Maria even have a lively discussion about an artist they both liked and it turned out they had both been at his opening in Nice between assignments. Maria laughed and Clint remembered that he liked her laugh, liked the way that Maria let down her guard and relaxed. He even liked the way her long fingers lay over the top of her glass. Coulson told him about the cellist he met on a blind date and Kingston suggested that Clint try speed dating.

“What do you say when you get to what you do?” asks Niall.

“Government contractor,” offers Coulson.

“Bike messenger,” says Clint, studying the menu.

“No one actually believes that,” Natasha breaks in her conversation with Maria over Clint’s head to stare at him.

Clint raises his eyes. “I’m a very good cyclist.”

Natasha narrowed her eyes. “I’m sure you are. But no one in their right mind would believe you.”

“That stupid icebreaker, two truths and a lie? I always win,” Kingston says idly. “We’re taught well.”

“I bet I could pick out your lie,” says Maria.

“I  _know_  I can pick out your lie,” says Coulson.

“Shut up, Phil,” they all say together and then Clint grins and adds, “You just know everything about everyone. That doesn’t help.”

Natasha says, “I can tell a lie.”

Clint leans back, crossing his arms. “Can you? I bet you can’t.”

Natasha smiles at him, the thin smile of a woman who is about to get what she wants and it is a little unnerving. “Okay. Play your two truths and one lie game.”

They wait until they order food and Kingston leans forward, rubbing his hands. “I’ll play. One, I attended Harvard for one semester under a false name to date this girl I liked. Two, I have met three presidents and all of them thought I was their personal secretary. Two, I climbed el camino del rey.”

“Two,” Natasha replies immediately, her eyes intent on his face.

“Huh,” Kingston mutters, frowning at her. “How’d you know?”

“You have tells,” she informs him, crossing her arm and leaning on the table. “Next.”

Niall shakes his head. “Fuck no.”

Coulson smiles and shakes his head. Maria shrugs. “I’ll play. One, Maria Hill is not my birth name. Two, I was a creative writing major. Three, I am the reason Fury only has one eye.”

Clint laughs and then stops when she raises an eyebrow at him. Natasha’s eyes are sharp and focused on Maria when she says, “Two. I’m guessing Literature but not writing.”

“How’d you know?”

“I’d be giving away state secrets if I told you,” Natasha replies teasingly but the table tenses.

Niall says, “Which state?”

Natasha’s face is cold. “It was meant as a joke.”

“I’ll go now,” Clint says to diffuse the tension. “One, I can juggle with my feet on the back of a moving elephant. Two, I killed a man in jail. Three, I was married before I joined SHIELD.”

Natasha tips her head and he thinks he has her until she says, “And?”

He says, “And what?”

She smiles. “Where’s the lie? Those things are all true.”

“You were married?” asks Coulson.

“What’s this about an elephant?” asks Kingston in disbelief.

Clint watches Natasha settle back against the chair, sipping at her beer, a self satisfied smirk on her face. He answers their questions and says to her, sideways out of his mouth in Russian, “I hate you.”

A strange twist of her mouth happens and she says, “You should.”

Later, they walk back to base, and he looks sideways to see Natasha staring up at the sky while walking in a surprisingly straight line for a woman of her size who drank as much as she did. He falls back from the group to walk with her, and he tries not to stare at her.

She glances sideways at him and says, “I was married too.”

He blinks. “What? You’re like…what, twenty?”

She shrugs. “It is different, for them, for us.”

“How old were you?”

“Sixteen,” she says quietly, her eyes finding the stars again. She wraps her arms around herself but he knows she isn’t cold.

“How old was he?” the question was out of his mouth before he can stop it.

She shrugs. “Twenty? Twenty one? He died.”

“Did you kill him?” Clint asks after a few paces.

Natasha flinches. “No.”

He nods and they walk together for a long time until Natasha says, “If he hadn’t died, I don’t know that I would have defected.”

Clint stops and looks at her, watching her walk a few paces before she stopped and turned to find out why he stopped. His heart was pounding in his chest. He said, “The man I killed in jail didn’t deserve to die. He just reminded me of someone and I couldn’t stop myself.”

Natasha walked back towards him, standing next to him without touching him. She says, “I liked that bar.”

He gave her a crooked smile. “I’m glad.”

She lifted herself on her tiptoes, the streetlights illuminating her face that was full of confusion and tension. She touched Clint’s cheek, and then turned and walked away.

He calls, “Welcome to the team.”

She calls over her shoulder. “See you in the morning, teammate.”

For the first time in awhile, Clint Barton looks forward to waking up in the morning.

(She asked him: Am I a conquest?

He snorted, barely able to breathe: Generally speaking, my conquests don’t pin me to the mat in the gym and sit on me while asking me existential questions.

He does not say: I looked at you, bleeding and battered and exhausted by the world, and I saw myself. You only look me in the eye when you are lying to me, and your lies are like rain in London. Your truth is like a solstice. So is mine. No one sees me.

She does not say: I never ask questions I do not want the answers to, except you. You are the question I cannot find the words for. You are the question my tongue trips over. You are the question I am afraid of. You looked at me like you knew me, but you cannot know me if I do not know myself.

He does not say: I will carry your truth for you.

She does not say: I will carry your loneliness.

They do not say: I have waited my entire life for you. Be my anchor, be my sky. Be my reason why.)

 


End file.
